10 Facts About Paolo Virno

Paolo Virno is an Italian philosopher, semiologist and a figurehead for the Italian Marxist movement.

Paolo Virno spent several years in prison before finally being acquitted, after which he organized the publication Luogo Comune in order to vocalize the political ideas he developed during his imprisonment.

Paolo Virno was born in Naples, but spent his childhood and adolescence in Genoa.

Paolo Virno moved to Rome with his family at the beginning of the 1970s, where he studied philosophy in university.

Simultaneously, Paolo Virno was involved in the labour movement and campaigned in the organization Potere Operaio, a Marxist group involved in the recruitment and mobilization of industrial workers.

Paolo Virno participated in the movement, organizing protests and strikes in northern Italian factories, until its dissolution in 1973.

In 1977 Paolo Virno presented his doctoral thesis on the concept of work and the theory of consciousness of Theodor Adorno, while actively participating in the movement of 1977, which organized around the precariousness of workers.

In 1993 Paolo Virno left his post as editor of Luogo Comune to teach philosophy at the University of Urbino.

The early works of Paolo Virno were directly linked to his political participation, but after years of imprisonment, which along with his fellow prisoners, he conducted intensive studies of philosophy, and his focus on theoretical research has become more ambitious, covering political philosophy, linguistics and the study of mass media.

Paolo Virno maintains the status of historical and linguistic concepts as being political-state, sovereignty, obedience, legality, legitimacy, which are accepted in social theory and philosophy as invariant, although polemically are considered to have been invented in the 17th century, with very specific and controversial political objectives.